Away away
by AzaleaRill
Summary: Moana and Maui spend some time together...as hawks!
1. Chapter 1

"Hey curls, waiting for the ocean to bring you something? Maybe this time a liver, or... Oh! I know, the thing on the inside of a blow-fish that makes 'em go 'blahhtt'," Maui twirled his hook and changed into the spiny specimen, landing with a squelch on the beach.

"Happy birthday to me too, thanks sharkhead." Moana tried to look indignant, but her smile came to easy, especially when Maui was around.

"Oh, birthdays, I've had a lot of those." Mini Maui walked across Maui's chest with a birthday cake sporting a single candle. He stopped, looked around with a big grin. Noticing that nobody seemed to be celebrating though, he blew out the candle, threw the cake over his shoulder and sat down in dejection. "Not a lot of celebrating, of course." Maui said with a trace of wistfulness.

"Parties aren't all they're cracked up to be," said Moana, getting up off the sand and coming to stand beside him. "Sometimes it's just nice to be with those closest to you."

For a moment, there was just the moon on the ocean and the uncountable stars stretching away forever.

"So," said Maui, looking around suspiciously as if he thought Hei Hei might be sneaking up on him. The chicken would try to peck a hole in his foot and he wanted to make sure he didn't mistakenly kick it all the way to Ta Fiti. "So, what would you like from ol' Maui for your birthday? Demi-god of wind and sea can get you a star if you want, just got'ta aim right…" He started to whirl his fish hook, but Moana stopped him with a rushed laugh, imagining the earth changing implications of kidnapping a star!

"No, no," she said, putting her hands up so he would stop the whirling. "I actually wanted to give you something." Dropping her arms quickly so they encircled his massive neck, she kissed him smack on the lips.

Surprise and a head-rush of exhilaration flooded Maui's senses. He couldn't control the response of wrapping his arms around dipping her back, deeper into the moment. Mini Maui, on the other hand, was having a silent screaming fit that finally seemed to penetrate Maui's thick skull.

"Wait, what?!" he said, suddenly breaking contact. He unwittingly let go of Moana and she dropped with an "oomph" to the sand.

"All right," she said from beneath the tent of hair that had flopped over her face. "I guess that's a 'no'."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" sputtered Maui, clutching at his thick hair and shaking his head. "Human, demi-god! Moa, there's just no way that it could work!"

"That's the only problem you have?" asked Moana, pulling back her thick tresses to look at him.

"Come on, curly, you know I think you're adorable!" He kicked sheepishly at the sand and mini Maui batted his eyes at her while little hearts floated and popped like bubbles around him. "But surely you've heard of Hina and Kahikiula? They got together and there was nothing but trouble!"

"I know," Moana said, doodling in the sand with her fingers. "But I can't help the way I feel."

Suddenly, Maui's face changed from a look of consternation to something sly, as if a lightbulb had turned on (wait, what's a lightbulb? tee hee). He strutted over to Moana and flashed a big, cheesy grin. "You still want a gift for your birthday?"

"…yes…" Moana said hesitantly, remembering that Maui was a trickster.

With a flourish, the demi-god presented her with his hook.

"And what am I supposed to do with that?" She asked, getting to her feet, hands on hips.

"Oh no," said Maui suggestively. "I believe you mean 'what are we going to do with that?' "

He suddenly spun the hook around Moana's waist and pulled her in close so that they were both within the magic's aura. "Hang on, curly," he said. With a buzzing sound of intense power, Maui changed both himself and Moana into hawks.

The screech she gave as he swooped her off the ground would have made Hei Hei proud.

"Maui, I can't fly!" she screamed at him as he pushed her skyward.

"Better learn quick, curls!" he shouted back before letting her go to tumble into the wind. "It's just like sailing! Only with wings…and a tail… and … gravity!" Moana had plunged straight down toward the dark ocean. He swooped down in time to save her from the waves and pushed her back toward the sky.

"This is not a gift, this is a nightmare!" She tried getting her wings to work as Maui tipped her once more into open air. "Sailing," she said to herself and closed her eyes, feeling for the wind as she would have had her hand been on the boom of her boat. She felt an updraft tickle her feathers and let the current fill her wings.

A moment later, she was among the stars.


	2. Chapter 2

"Well, look at you," said Maui as he drifted up beside her.

"This is amazing," she said, looking at the view spread out below – bits of cloud and white capped waves flowed beneath them as the night wind allowed them to float above the dark sea. "It's not what I asked for, but…"

"Oh, we're not done yet. See that up there?" Maui gestured with his beak to what looked like a rising sun ahead of them, except it was on the wrong horizon. "Get ready to dive, princess." He tucked his wings close to his sides and shot toward the light. What else could Moana do but follow?

It felt like being sucked down by an undertow, only incredibly bright and not wet. Not wet, that was, until they burst back into the night and found themselves in a torrential downpour!

"Ah seashells! Mis-timed it again," Maui yelled in dismay as their feathers became sodden.

Luckily, a jungle of trees appeared below them and they were able to glide beneath the canopy before the rain completely doused their flight.

"What was that?" Moana yelled as she shook out her feathers.

"Thunder, I believe," said Maui – striking the best mock-pensive pose he could muster as a bird. "Either that or the volcano has gone…"

"You know what I mean!" Moana almost swept him off the branch with a swipe of her wing.

"Oh, _that._ That was a time rift. We are now living hawk-lives while our real selves are off somewhere trying to return Ta Fiti's heart."

"Hawk-lives? Time rift?" Moana was incredulous. "Maui, why?"

The elegant hawk that was the demi-god looked slightly deflated. "Well, I thought it was a way I could kind-of give you what you asked for."

"What I asked for?" Moana hunched her head into her breast feathers, trying to connect what had happened on the beach with the current state of affairs. "What I wanted was for us…" She stopped suddenly, realization hitting her. "Wait…"

"That right kid," said Maui, unable to resist preening. We're a mated pair! Hawks together until we catch up with real time again."

There was a stunned silence interrupted only by the roll of thunder. And then Maui wished the volcano had gone off instead of Moana.

"You jerk, what were you thinking? That this would just be okay with me? Rip me out of time and make me a bird? Who does that?"

"I thought…" Maui tried to interject.

"You didn't think, Maui! You just had a super-great idea and ran with it! You did this so we could, _**what**_ , fly around together and have _eggs?"_

"I sorta thought that was what you wanted."

"No!" Moana flustered. "Well, no…I don't know!" She softened in confusion. "I don't know what I really wanted, but it wasn't _this!"_ Scooting away from him along the branch, she found herself in the pouring rain again and merely hunched there in muddled misery.

After a moment, Maui joined her and spread a wide wing to shelter her from the rain.

"Okay, I messed up," he said demurely. "Now just imagine if we'd been a human couple." He rolled his eyes, uneasy at the very thought of the trials and travails. "I am afraid, though, that we are in this until we catch up with time again, so…" he wrapped his wing around Moana and gave her an encouraging hug. "…until then, can I show you a good time?"

She gave him a good bump with her beak, but smiled and snuggled into him.

"Also, I'm not really demi-godish right now and I'm not enjoying being cold and wet. Can we go in?"


	3. Chapter 3

It turned out that snuggling with feathers was really nice.

In the sun-drenched days that followed, Maui taught Moana all there was to know about flying: the thrill of diving from miles high, how one could sail on wind currents for hours without a flick of a wing, the euphoric high that came from racing through the hazard-ridden canopy of island jungles. They spent long, quiet hours just watching sunsets or sunrises, or preening and snoozing as the day wasted away, the peace of an avian existence settling upon Moana like a comfortable blanket.

Eventually, instinct found them and they even made _that_ fight.

…...

"And what is _that?_ "

The eggs, which had taken most of the morning to hatch, now lay in shards at the bottom of the nest. The first two chicks were bulgy-eyed, gangly, naked monstrosities – beautiful in the eyes of hawk parents.

Out of the third egg popped Tamar – small and cockeyed with a funny sprig of down feathers curling from his head.

"He's special," said Moana. "I like him."

Maui pulled the best face a hawk father could. "He certainly reminds me of someone; a certain fowl fellow, no, wait, a 'boat-snack' I know." When Moana rolled her eyes at him, he fluffed up with indignation at her disdain of his witticism. "Well, we'll just say he gets it from your side of the family." With that, he launched himself from the nest to find the kids some breakfast.

…...

It had been raining for days when the mudslide happened. It wiped out a whole section of the small island: beaches, jungle, trees, nest…

Tamar, who oddly tended to sleep _on top_ of his mother rather than under her, was the only one of the nestlings to survive.

Maui was inconsolable. He spent a lot of time for a while staring at the ocean.

Moana tucked Tamar in a safe place and went to sit beside him one day.

"If I hadn't stuck us in this stupid time warp, I could bring them back," he said.

"If we weren't here, they never would have existed at all." Moana reminded him.

Being human, she realized, gave her a different concept of mortality. She had seen enough life and death, even at her young age, to understand that one had to find a way through tragedy to keep on living. Otherwise, one didn't live at all. Heartbroken though she was at the loss of their small family, there was still Tamar. Also, Maui and her were still here together. They had to see this through no matter what.

"You did this for me-" she said to Maui, "-but in a way, I think you did it for you too."

"What? You don't think a thousand years alone on a small island was good for me?" There was almost no humor in his voice, but Moana thought she saw a slight twinkle in his bright, hawk eye.


	4. Chapter 4

And so they went on.

When the time came, they tried to teach Tamar to fly. He did a lot more flopping than flapping. In secret, Moana worried that he would never make it on his own, but she always tried to sound confident about the little hawks' chances whenever Maui mentioned the short amount of time they had left.

Then, suddenly, that time was upon them.

Moana went to sleep one night tucked close to Maui's warm feathers, Tamar sleeping, oddly, flat on his back with his legs in the air. What she thought was lightning and thunder woke her and she sat up, hearing the breaking of waves - so different in human ears. She lay on the dark beach where she had been waiting for Maui on her last birthday.

No, not last birthday… this birthday. Time had caught up.

"I got a great gift for you, curly!" Maui's voice boomed from behind her.

"No, no, no!" she scrambled to her feet and turning quickly to face the demi-god. "I really appreciate it but...!

"What, you don't like him anymore?" Maui stood, tattooed, dark haired and smiling (Mini Maui mimed hugging him like crazy). In his hands he held a wild profusion of foliage - his non-hawk attempt at a nest - in which Tamar slept, feet in the air.

Moana took his gift gently, tears streaming down her face. "Thank you." She put an arm around his neck and kissed him fondly on the cheek. "I really do love you."

"I know," he said almost filippently, but with a softness she understood.

Whipping his hook around, he laid it out in his hands and gave her a bow. "From now on, my hawk form is for you and you alone. That much of myself I can give." And with that, he turned into a little buzzing green bug, making a less than dramatic exit.

Moana hugged Tamar, nest and all. The little hawk woke and tried to crawl under her armpit. She laughed and said: "I think you and a certain chicken are going to be great friends."


End file.
